


a safe kind of danger

by maelidify



Series: Earth Intervals [6]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 18+ I guess but only for the implication of slight kink as coping mechanism, 5x06, F/M, I want to do a longer and smuttier version of this sometime, Trauma, also communication issues, enjoy... whatever this is, psychological drabble I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-21 00:25:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14905025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maelidify/pseuds/maelidify
Summary: She should have realized he missed her old edges.





	a safe kind of danger

Looking down at John, Emori feels approximately four moments all at once, like a small multitude of streams converging.

1.) is a memory.

 _Touch me here_ , he once said, hand on his own neck as though he meant to break it. Some sort of destruction in his eyes. A challenge.

 _And if I want to be gentle?_ she asked. Three years ago. She'd softened and should have realized he missed her old edges.

 _This is what I need_. A step closer-- and the stars outside watching, a safe kind of danger. _Don't you get off on being threatening?_

She wasn't sure he was talking to her.

I can't exorcise ghosts if I don't know their names, she almost said. She took a step closer, that old wildness rushing through, the need to heal harshly. His neck there, vulnerable under her light touch. His back against the wall. The shudder of his breath, the way it filled his whole body as they pressed together.

2.) is a memory.

Maybe it was too late that she realized they needed danger to be safe.

They were pulled in different directions, but still they held one another at night. She had to work in the morning, and he had to resent her for working.

Still.

It was the middle of the night and they both breathed in an uneven rhythm. She remembered taking lives. She looked at him, at how he made himself small next to her.

 _Did it help?_ she asked. She meant the way she used to exorcise his ghosts. She meant the deliberation of hurt that can be controlled-- a pull of hair and a press of nails. She meant a finger full of violence he can say _stop_ to. She meant the love and the healing, the kind of healing that comes from the dark and flies in a full circle.

 _What do you mean?_ he asked. He turned away. She didn't say what she meant.

  
3.) is here.

Their wild polarity. He tastes like dirt and pain and _fuck_ , the hunger in his mouth. He climbs over her but she shoves him back into the dirt, his heartbeat under her thumb. It nearly jumps through his skin. They fit so well.

She leans over him. If only she could crush him into her so that they could become the same again. _This doesn't mean we're back together._

He eats the words, their mouths devouring again. It feels so fitting, and their words and hurts are out there, known, exposed, raw. She's not used to undoing herself. She'd nearly cried in front of him earlier.

So maybe it's a denial of vulnerability when she shoves him back down. His hands had slipped under her shirt, touching her skin. He'd touched the parts of her that hurt earlier, in the rocket, and only she was allowed to do that, to touch bruises like that.

Who was she now, hurting in different ways? Could he decide to love someone so different from who she used to be?

But, she thinks, looking down at him, not so different. She could cut his bitterness apart inside her mouth. Touching him, hand to neck, his eyes dark in recognition, she knows how he has missed this.

When they're interrupted, the hunger remains between them, like a thin, shivering thread. Their wounds are waiting, too. They are open for the first time, each to each.

4.) is a memory.

A good con in the woods, and a thin layer of earth and sweat on their skin. She was always parched and always full on those days, running from grief and finding a home in someone's wounded ribcage.

The second time they made love: the way she asked if she could and then kissed his neck hard and made a bruise. She knew about the hanging. _Is that okay?_ she asked when she noticed it, a splotch like a fallen fruit. She traced it lightly with one of her longer fingers, unable to feel his warmth with the numb skin.

They were spent. Together in the woods, they breathed one another's air. He traced the mark too.

 _Yeah_ , he said. _Covers up the other ones_.

 


End file.
